From Eidos Playing Dirty To Call Of Duty Getting Its Name Back: News Roundup 10th July

This Friday’s news roundup sees Eidos getting up to some dirty tactics. Elder Scrolls II available for free download, Alien Breed becoming the latest blast from the past and Modern Warfare 2 regaining its Call Of Duty moniker.

Eidos Attempt To Influence Review Scores

Eidos has once again been caught out attempting to fix game reviews, and give their games more attention than rightfully deserved. Eidos have previously been exposed voting for their own games in a game of the year poll, attempting to fix review scores for Tomb Raider, and have even been linked to the firing of a gaming journalist on gamespot for not giving Kane & Lynch a high enough score (at the time Eidos were pumping a lot of money into gamespot in exchange for heavy advertising).

This time around Eidos have provided several magazines with a review code of Batman: Arkham Asylum, but have forced them to hold off from publishing their review until an embargo expires at the end of the month. Eidos have provided a helpful way around this embargo though. By dedicating the cover of the magazine to Arkham Asylum and guaranteeing a score of at least 90%, Eidos will allow the review to be published early. Any magazines that turn up soon with Arkham Asylum on the cover and a review score of at least 90% can quite possibly be tainted with the brush of lies. [Ramraider]

Alien Breed Revived

Amiga classic Alien Breed is the latest game to receive the makeover treatment. Released way back in 1991 this game saw great success on the Amiga, and later on the PC. Team 17 have announced they plan to revamp the title as Alien Breed Evolution, promising a "drop-dead gorgeous retro-modern remake", powered by the Unreal3 engine. New additions to the game include co-op play, and the game will only be available through download. What platforms this will appear on is yet to be announced. [Gamespot]

Elder Scrolls II Released As Free Download

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released to overwhelming praise, hailed for the freedom of choice in the huge open world it offered. These elements can be seen in a more basic form in the earlier Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of Elder Scrolls, Bethesda have released it to download free of charge on their web site. As its free Bethesda are not providing technical support for it, although they have provided a step-by-step guide on how to run the DOSBox program, letting it play on modern computers. [ShackNews]

Modern Warfare 2 Takes Back Call Of Duty Prefix

The new Call of Duty wasn’t actually known as Call of Duty until now. Infinity Ward’s director of communications and community manager Robert Bowling announced he just received the new Modern Warfare 2 boxes, with an accompanying photo showing the Call Of Duty prefix back in the title.

Perhaps due to the drop in awareness losing the Call Of Duty title caused, or it could even be due to the fact that plans of Turning Modern Warfare into its own independent franchise (as commonly believed) have failed. Whatever the case this game will still sell like hotcakes even if it was called Don’t buy this game: Modern Warfare 2. [Gamespot]